Good Cop, Bad War

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Woods gives a telling description of the Manchester Police Force, where a special task force of 12 men is set up to investigate drugs (amongst a police force of about 11,000 men), as it cannot be guaranteed that amongst the general force there aren't several policemen or detectives being paid by drug dealers to leak them information. These guys will spend months working in an area, just so their faces have been seen and their backstory carries more weight. This is why Neil started to see legalisation as the only solution and would support a change in government policy on drugs. I did find myself in a juxtaposition on whether I liked his personality at times throughout the book with some of the tough decisions he made.

LEAP is an organisation made up exclusively of law enforcement professionals, past and present, who campaign for drug law reforms.It starts off as a fairly standard cop memoir about "fighting the good fight" and putting some horrible gangsters away but gets really gripping when the scales start to fall from his eyes and he realizes that the better the cops get at their job, the better the gangsters get at theirs - by being even more violent and predatory.

The book is set into chapters of towns where he was thrown in as an undercover operative with the objective being to arrest the main drug dealer of the area. But, inevitably, having swords thrust against his jugular, witnessing beatings, stabbings, and gangsters burning suspected rats with acid took its toll. From the early jobs where there were no established rules and you survived by your wits, Neil became one of the most successful operatives in a 14 year undercover career, locking up gang members for a total of a thousand years. I would highly recommend this book, as well as the numerous podcasts Neil speaks on regarding the war on drugs.They way he always remembered that addicts and people caught up in drug use or dealing are often the victims and they needed help, support and the protection of the police instead of being collateral damage was what fascinated me the most.

Violence in our inner cities is as bad as ever - while crime rates as a whole are falling, knife crime and gun crime is hardly a thing of the past on the sink estates that dot British cities.

During his career he witnessed increased brutality, violence meted out to addicts who spoke out, or even who introduced a stranger to their dealer. This book is a narrative of the development of Neil Woods' career as a cop in England and how his opinions were shaped by his experiences on the job. The powers that be saw little difference between an addict dealing to fund their habit and the gun-toting thugs a rung above and would charge them both just as happily. This is a man with real empathy for the people he was trying to help, an outlook that is seriously at odds with most books penned by former police officers. I would say it is impossible to have a healthy relationship with anyone keeping that level of secrecy, I felt sorry for Sam and his children.

With the insight that can only come from having fought on its front lines, Neil came to see the true futility of the War on Drugs – that it demonises those who need help, and only empowers the very worst elements in society. Neil is on the board of LEAP (Law Enforcement Action Partnership) in the US and is the Chair of LEAP in the UK.All in all, it got me thinking that law enforcement and mental health providers should work more closely to protect the vulnerable and weaken the power of the drug gangsters.